Doping dependence of minority carrier lifetime in long-wave Sb-based type II superlattice infrared detector materials

Theoretical modeling and experimental evidence show that the dark currents of antimonide (Sb)-based Type-II Superlattice (T2SL) detectors sensitive to long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) radiation are limited by the minority carrier lifetimes associated with the Shockley Read-Hall (SRH) generation-recombination process. Despite the low minority carrier lifetimes, the present photodiode dark current performance is achieved by increasing the background doping density of the absorber layers to N-A similar to 2 x 10(16) cm(-3). This paper will discuss the measured minority carrier lifetimes of T2SL LWIR detectors with various background doping densities. To make comparisons, we designed several T2SL absorber layers sensitive in the LWIR range and p-type doped up to various densities. We find the minority carrier lifetimes are dominated by the SRH generation-recombination process. By analyzing minority carrier lifetime data as a function of excess carrier densities, we estimate SRH lifetimes and actual ionized acceptor densities of the absorber layers. The data are compared with the measured impurity doping densities of the detectors. In addition, we predict the type of flaws responsible for the SRH recombination process and narrow down the flaw energy level relative to the Fermi energy. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3590720]